News & Events

From The Daily Gazette of Schenectady / By Ted Remsnyder / Jan 24, 2025

SCHENECTADY — The Schenectady-based school bus-routing company Transfinder reported a record $42.2 million in revenue in 2024, up 20% from the prior year.

The company, which announced it added 168 new clients in 2024, has now notched 27 consecutive years of annual growth.

In an interview at the company’s State Street headquarters on Thursday, Transfinder President and CEO Antonio Civitella said the key to the company’s growth last year was the 117% increase Transfinder recorded in hardware sales, collecting $9.5 million last year.
Transfinder has moved towards selling hardware including tablets and mounts for the school buses that run the company’s Wayfinder software, which provides turn-by-turn directions for bus drivers and the ability for them to take student attendance.

The company now offers its clients packages including bus software and the hardware that can run it.

“A lot of our clients don’t want to start shopping around for hardware and mounts and installers because it can get hectic,” Civitella said. “A lot of them are saying, ‘You do it all. I’ll pay you to install it, to maintain it, warranty, all of it.’ So that became a big part of our offering.”

The company saw a 67% sales increase for its Wayfinder software last year, adding school districts to its client list.

“It’s becoming more mature, because it’s been out for a few years now, so we’ve got the great combination of awesome software and reliable hardware,” Civitella said. “There’s a significant demand for this type of technology inside the school bus. Parents want to track, ‘Did my son get on the bus and how far is the bus from my house?’”

In 2023, the company launched a partnership with the Schenectady Police Department to install the then-new Patrolfinder software in city police cars to track which streets have been patrolled by officers in real time.

The program has now expanded to every police department in Schenectady County and it was also recently adopted by the Utica Police Department. The company is planning for further expansion.

Transfinder saw a 47% increase in sales in its fleet-managing Servicefinder software in 2024. The software is not limited to school buses, with the product managing vehicle fleets with an aim of improving productivity.

“That’s tracking daily mileage on a vehicle, parts and inventory,” Civitella said. “It’s a huge system.”

Transfinder hosted its first client summit since 2019 in San Antonio, Texas in April, gathering clients at the company event for the first time since the COVID pandemic.

The company’s next client summit will commence on March 30 in Nashville, Tennessee.

The majority of Transfinder’s workers remain remote and do not report daily to the company’s Schenectady office, with Civitella noting that the pre-pandemic normal of an office full of workers may not return.

“I don’t know if things, as a technology company, could ever be the way it was in the past,” he said. “I don’t think it can be, especially the way we’ve hired. We’ve hired people throughout the country at this point. There will always be remote employees, for sure. The model has worked really well for us.”

Civitella said the company is creating two divisions within Transfinder for the first time, with the Pupil Logistics Division to focus on school transportation and the Safety and Security Division to focus on police and municipalities seeking security software.

“If we’re branching out, it doesn’t mean we’re paying less attention to something that we’re good at,” Civitella said. “We’re so dedicated that we want to rebrand that as Pupil Logistics, everything about getting kids to school. That’s a major focus.”

Civitella used a culinary analogy to affirm the company’s commitment to its focus on school bus software.

“We want to do other things, but don’t change the recipe in your grandma’s meatballs,” he said.

Transfinder, which plans to expand its staff of 195 employees with the launch of its two divisions, is projecting $50 million in revenue in 2025.

“We have tons of elements that should take us closer to $50 million,” Civitella said.

He noted that the company plans to retain its roots in Schenectady, with the company occupying prime downtown real estate next to Proctors on State Street.

“It’s my backyard,” he said. “My family lives here and most of the executives live here also. If we decided to leave during COVID, I never would have had the opportunity to explore the relationship we have with the Schenectady police. That never would have happened. The relationships we have in our backyard here for decades, you can’t just uproot and go someplace else and start a new relationship.”